Free speech is free

Free speech is free

Amidst all the hijinks surrounding Ann Coulter’s will she/won’t she flirtation with triggering the kids in Berkeley (as it turned out, she won’t), our leftist friends have rediscovered an interest in freedom of speech. Granted, they filter their observations of the chaos in Californistan through a left-wing lens, so their takes on the topic have trended towards the blazing hot, rather than the coolly thoughtful. But while the Soros-funded hate groups shrieked battle cries like “by any means necessary,” and leftist ideologues like former Democrat Party chairman Howard Dean pronounced “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment [sic] ,” it’s the esteemed journals of the age who have served up a few particularly steamy piles of pabulum.

The New York Times offered professional academic Ulrich Baer with ”What Snowflakes Get Right About Free Speech.” Baer makes predictable excuses for the left’s increasingly violent thuggery in places like Berkeley; among them a major-league Godwin’s Law violation in which he cites dead communist Jean-François Lyotard in order to compare victims of the new liberal fascism with Holocaust deniers.

As tortured as is his equation of the people being violently repressed with some of the most violent oppressors in history, it’s nothing compared to his closing flourish, in which he declares the people throwing Molotov cocktails to be the good guys. “We should thank the student protestors, the activists in Black Lives Matter and other “overly sensitive” souls for keeping watch over the soul of our republic.” His watchdogs have employed violence, destruction and even homicide to keep their campuses ideologically homogenized. Thanks but no thanks, “Professor.” I’m not sure how many words Baer wasted to pen his screed, but the answer to “What snowflakes get right about free speech” needs only one: nothing.

While the rotting remains of the “Gray Lady” allowed Baer to go full fascist, the equally esteemed Washington Post donned their best brownshirts for the ponderously titled “Berkeley gave birth to the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. Now, conservatives are demanding it include them,” by a purported reporter named John Woodrow Cox. Not for nothing Mr. Cox, but if your header stinks worse than the body odor wafting through the air at an “antifa” riot, the body is almost irrelevant. Cox’s crediting of the hotbed of leftist butt hurt with the creation of free speech ignores a few cats in Philadelphia who jotted down a few salient thoughts on the topic about 190 years before the Bay Area hippies took their first bong rips.

Furthermore, conservatives aren’t “demanding” the First Amendment “include them.” Conservatives don’t need to appeal to violent left-wing fascists for a gift of free expression any more than violent left wing fascists can grant it. Expecting liberals not to behave like meth-addled howler monkeys whenever they’re confronted with free speech isn’t a plea for a gift thereof. I would have expected a journal which made a big show out of debuting their new “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan to know the difference.

The real issue is simple; whether in Berkeley, New York or wherever else college-aged numbskulls and their lunatic professors skip class to throw insults, punches and/or incendiary devices at people who challenge their anti-intellectual fascism, if you’re on the side of the numbskulls, you’re a numbskull. There is no real debate here; or at least there shouldn’t be. Free speech is free, not a luxury to be bestowed upon the masses by left wing thugs. Howard Dean, The New York Times, The Washington Post and/or every snowflake on the Berkeley campus are free to despise Ann Coulter and free to make a public stink about it. And she’s free to tell them to get bent.